Aaaathank you (source).
PS: The tendency is to not capitalize ‘internet’, a small factoid I mention simply because I happen to know it. And because the philosophy of writing, I’ve been told, is: “Write what you know”. And I know that… So…
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This is Binary Bonsai, the online journal of Michael Heilemann — a Danish expat Interface Director at Squarespace, ex-Computer Game Developer and Film Lover — coming to you out of New York. It contains thoughts on games, interface design, movies, books, science fiction, Star Wars and various other subjects as befits the author, who is available for comment on Twitter.
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But of course, the hacking/internet/tech elements of Transformers (which you loved) were entirely accurate, right?
Interesting…
Er, the comic is in relation to Die Hard.
What the hell does that have to do with Transformers plot elements – given that Michael hasn’t actually mentioned them in the same entry?
Jumping to conclusions, much? :)
Barry, there are a number of differences between the two, which your attempt at showing my double morals fail to take into account, such as:
Die Hard is about a very human cop, who has been through a divorce, who cuts his feet walking on glass, while fighting terrorists and who smokes, wisecracks and gets beat the fuck up.
Transformers is a toy commercial (literally; it was made in cooperation with Hasbro) for robots that transform into vehicles.
Can you spot the difference?
Now I didn’t mention this in my review of Transformers, other than calling the ‘electronic codebreaker’ subplot irrelevant and expendable (which I think says it all), but since you imply that I perhaps differentiate between the two movies, let me just for the record say that the ‘Look, a soundwave is breaking our best IP’s! Run the UNIX protocol on the firewalls! Quick, type random things faster while saying things in your ridiculous Australian accent!’ mumbo-jumbo is fairly retarded and poorly executed.
But. The pivotal difference is that while that bit is an expendable footnote in the overall story of Transformers, Die Hard hinges its entire story on the idea of a firesale, which is entirely unbelievable.
And again, Die Hard is (ostensibly) about an everyman who is pulling splinters of glass from his feet, while Transformers is about giant robots, one of whom, upon awakening from decades or more of sleep announces “I AM MEGATRON!”, one turns into a ghettoblaster and a good 7 – 8 minutes are given to a comic-relief-scene, in which the Autobots stomp around in ‘dad’s precious garden’, ruining it.
So yes, I think it’s stupid, but I also think Transformers has earned some leeway.
Tech is always stupidly wrong in movies. Even when they went to the bother of using nmap in the Matrix Reloaded, they still got it wrong.
There were a lot of things wrong with Die Hard 4, and there were a lot of things wrong with Transfomers. You nailed most of them, although I think you were a little hard (ahem) on Die Hard 4. I enjoyed both of them for the mindless entertainment they were meant to be.
I just think it’s way too easy to mock a movie for being inaccurate from a geek’s point of view, since every single movie with a computer in it always seems to get something embarrassingly wrong.
While the tendency may be to not capitalize Internet, it is grammatically incorrect to not do so. I can create my own ‘internet’ of interconnected computers in my house, but that doesn’t necessarily make it ‘The Internet’ in that I can connect to other computers around the world in the same way that the actual Net (should be capitalized as well) does.
The Web should also be capitalized in that you’re referring to the singular personal pronoun for the Web, not just a web of computers.
It might not look as cool as leaving the ‘i’, ‘n’, or ‘w’ lowercase, but really, it’s more accurate to refer to them corrrectly.
Don’t think it matters much which movie you see, if you are somewhat an expert on what ever it’s about, it is most likely going to suck. Movies are not made for experts but for the masses. I don’t think hollywood cares about being accurate as much as entertaining.
Would I like hollywood to spent 2 minutes more researching… yes… but can you really blame a movie about super evil hackers, or giant robots for being a bit unrealistic or event a bit inaccurate??. it is fiction.
According to strict AP style, Internet is capitalized. So is Web. But then again, AP style says e-mail should have a hyphen in it.
Anyway…
Adam: lower case is official spelling here in Sweden. Varies by country.
I think the biggest failing of Live Free or Die Hard was the assumption by Len Wiseman that it would be OK to make it a dumb, generic, “check your brain at the door” action flick. The first Die Hard was actually pretty smart, for an action movie at least.
I was tought that Internet is a topologi, as in The Internet, while internet is a network protocol. I have no doubt though that when most people are writing “internet”, they are rarely talking about a networking protocol.
Grammar is a load of crap. Language is what we make it!
Hail the intertron!
Entirely untrue nectarine. Language is inherently communal, and by its very nature of being a communications protocol has to be shared. While it can evolve and become something different over time, language is not ‘what we make it’, if you by that mean that we can go about spelling and grammaring (for instance, not a word) in whatever way we see fit.
Formal rules of grammar were invented along with the forming of a middle class so that they could learn how to feel better then the poor. Language has and will evolve just fine without putting ourselves in boxes. Not saying conventions are bad just that it’s not worth worrying about details. I don’t really expect people to agree though.
Though there are plenty of linguists who consider grammar to be overrated.
It’s funny how the people who complain about spelling and grammar never seem to be very good at either.
I’m in the “internet”/“The Internet” boat, speaking strictly from an American (US) English background. Things may have changed though as last time I really remember going over this, commonly capitalized phrases in use were also The Information Superhighway and The Global Village. ;)
Haven’t seen Transformers, but I was really pleasantly surprised with Die-Hard. The whole firesale thing was a bit far-fetched, yes, but the way businesses (and government) here depend on technology they don’t have the staff to adequately maintain let alone a backup system, the idea of electronic terrorism itself isn’t really a stretch of the imagination.
Is Transformers something to be seen on the big screen or not a big enough deal to go out for? I rarely venture out to the movies these days aside from corporate movie nights, with the next scheduled to be The Bourne Ultimatum.
JÄ